


Thy Kingdom Come

by anna_sun



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Although no one actually dies in the fic, Angst, Character Death, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 17:18:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13618026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anna_sun/pseuds/anna_sun
Summary: He wakes up in absolute darkness.//Kingdom Come: An alternate way to use the expression ''the next world'', which implies an afterlife, or death.





	Thy Kingdom Come

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! 
> 
> So... This is a pretty weird one. But it's not really that hard to figure out, and I hope you'll still like the... weirdness. And the angst. 
> 
> Enjoy!

He wakes up in absolute darkness. First he notices the stench of rot and decay, and then closes his eyes shut when he feels himself wanting to throw up. He feels dizzy. He can’t move but there are no ties bounding his body, and he can’t part his lips to speak but there is nothing covering his mouth. The dizziness continues.

"Do you know why you are here?"

As they’ve done many times before his eyes quickly adjust to the absence of light around him, and not before long, he thinks he can see a silhouette. It seems to stand miles and miles away, and yet the voice is clear in his ears.

"No – I don’t – where am I?"

The voice laughs, and it takes a second for him to recognize it, but once he does, fear grows like weeds at the pit of his stomach. His heart drops, a tremble appears in his voice.

"M – Miranda?"

He blinks and suddenly she is there in front of him. There is a black hole on the pale skin of her forehead and he opens his mouth in a sob but it catches at the back of his throat.

"Because you don’t deserve to be any elsewhere."

She brings a hand up to caress his cheek with the tip of her thumb, and he finds himself able to move again.

"What?"

"You’ll see, love." Her smile is sad. "I’m sorry."

Then it is like the walls surround her whole body and he feels her pulling away, further and further away, until he is left reaching into the darkness and running, running, running after her like a madman. But she has disappeared, she is unreachable, and suddenly he is falling into a pit, and he can’t breathe, shimmers of light surrounding and taunting him.

He falls for what feels like years.

 

It takes him three times, to understand.

 

_One._

"James?"

He blinks awake. In front of him there is a fireplace and a white cat sitting by the windowsill and John Silver, setting plates on a beautiful wooden table before him. James’ fingers go crisp on the arms of the chair he’s sitting on and he frantically looks around, but recognizes nothing, apart from his old friend, and the strange sense that he’s been here before.

"What?"

John looks at him like he’s turned mad, and James starts to believe maybe he has.

"Do you want syrup on your pancakes?"

"If I want – " There is nothing right about this scenario. If John were truly in front of him they would have knives at each other’s throats. "No."

There’s a slight smile on the edge of John’s lips and he walks around to rest a hand at the base of James’ neck. James goes completely frigid.

"Are you alright?"

James laughs; he can’t help not to.

"I think this is a dream. Or a nightmare. I’m not quite sure which."

John looks concerned as he sits down next to him; there’s a crease between his eyebrows that just won’t leave and something about the way he takes each bite of his breakfast, like he’s way deep in his own thoughts and won’t allow James to be part of any of it.

"Eat, James. It’ll make you feel better." He says. "It’ll make _me_ feel better, too. Otherwise I’ve just cooked all of this for nothing, haven’t I?"

James hesitates because he’s not particularly hungry; the thoughts, fears and questions rattling in his brain are pushing all else from his priorities. But then he looks at John who’s still looking at him, his fork held in mid-air as he waits for James to take a bite. He hums approvingly when it turns out to be lovely, and John looks pleased.  

"We should head to town today. Miss Mapleton told me her plums were perfectly ripe this week, and I have to buy new quills."

James nods, he doesn’t know exactly what else to do, and before he knows it John is sitting up with an empty dish in his hand, crouching down to give him a light kiss on the cheek, and moving on to the kitchen. James stares at the dying flames of the fireplace in disbelief for a long time, before he finally finishes eating.  

The next morning James is in bed, John laying on his stomach next to him, and he continues glaring at the ceiling like it might provide him some answers, but nothing happens for a long time before John wakes up.

It’s not the sudden absence of snores that James notices; no, he realizes John is awake only when he feels a palm creeping up underneath the fabric of his shirt, and a leg tangle with his own. There is no doubt in his mind anymore about what kind of relationship they have in this place, but it still surprises him when John’s hands start caressing the thin skin over his ribs, and the man moves, with ease, fully on top of him.

"Morning," John’s voice is raspy in the crook of James’ shoulder and it sends shivers all the way down his spine. "Sleep well?"

"Yes," he lies. He hadn’t slept at all. "You?"

John only hums, and James can feel the full of his lips against the skin of his neck, smothering him with kisses mercilessly; he can feel John’s weight over him and his obvious morning arousal, pressing against his hip. These kinds of feelings he hadn’t felt in so long that he wonders again if they are real.

John presses a kiss right between his bare breasts before he sits up, looking at Flint with question marks in his gaze.

"What’s up with you?" John smiles nervously. "Usually I have to fight to keep your hands off ‘me."

"Sorry," James mirrors the smile; allows himself to lightly grab John by the waist. "I’m just – can you answer this for me? Where are we?"

 A moment of silence follows where John looks perplexed.

"In… our house?"

James sighs.

"No, I mean – where are we exactly? On the planet?"

John’s playful attitude drops dead at this moment, James can see it plain on his face. He moves to get off of him and sits by the edge of the bed, one foot on the ground, back faced towards him, and James suddenly feels very alone.

"I think you might be ill," John says, almost a whisper. "Maybe we should go see a doctor, there’s – "

"No, fuck the doctor." James’ mind might have been playing tricks on him but there was nothing some illiterate town’s doctor could do about it. "Just answer the question. Please?"

John laughs as he stands, but there is no joy in his face when he turns to look at him. If anything, what James sees on his features is nothing short of fear.

"I’m… I’m having some difficulty understanding how you can not know where we are, when it was your fucking idea to come here in the first place."

James’ eyes widen, and he pulls the blanket off his body to stand on his bare feet.

"I don’t remember it."

"Did you fall on your fucking head?"

"No."

"Then what _do_ you remember?"

Flint grits his teeth. He remembered his childhood in London and his lonesome years at school, he remembered his days in the Navy and the life he lead with Miranda, and Thomas, and he remembered but too clearly the tragic events that followed, and his time in Nassau, remembered the blood and the tears and the heartbreak and everything he sacrificed in the name of a better future for free men.

"I remember you, in the middle of the jungle, pointing a pistol at my face, betraying me and everything we’d fought for in the last – "

"No, fuck you!" John’s face has gone red, his breathing grown heavy. He’s got a grip on the old frame of their bed and his knuckles have turned white with rage. "We promised! You promised you were past all that! That we’d never speak of it again! And only now you speak your mind? How fucking petty are you, exactly?"

James doesn’t know what to answer to that. There is so much he has obviously forgotten and so much he doesn’t understand.

"I just know you had no right to end it. Our war, you had no right, and you know it, and Madi - " 

" _Don’t_." John interrupts as soon as James utters the name, and there are now tears falling freely upon his cheeks, but if they are of rage or sadness, James doesn’t know. "Just… don’t."

With this John grabs his crutch from the wall and starts grabbing various elements from the bedroom; many clothes from different drawers and some objects in others, placing them all in one bag, before moving on to the hallway. Of course, James follows him.

"John? John, you can’t leave me here."

"I can do whatever the fuck I please."

"I don’t even know where we are! Or how we got here!"

John huffs, exasperatedly.

"Good luck figuring it all out, then."

"John!"

The front door to the house has been opened, and James is barefoot but still he rushes down the creaking stairs of the patio, catching up with John, who is already well on his way to the stable, where yesterday James has learned they kept a horse. The ground is so filthy that James thinks he might have stepped on a nail at some point, but he doesn’t care; he follows John still. Always.

He says nothing as he watches him carefully wrap a rope around the golden beast’s neck to bring her out of her stall, arrange the straps of the saddle and gently pet her weave of hair before, in one swift motion, with his right foot in the stirrup, John pushes himself up and onto her.

"Please," James tries at last, unable to stop the tears from filling the brim of his eyes. "For the love of God, please, stay."

 John hesitates.

"Can you – can you tell me one thing, at least," he says, and James thinks _yes, yes, yes_. "Was any of this… real, to you?"

"I… I don’t know." The lump in James’ throat only grows bigger, John’s smile is sad, and they share a moment of godawful silence, before he commands the horse to walk.

"For your sake, I hope you’ll get better soon," John eventually says, and it sounds so much like last words that James’ entire being starts to panic.

But then the horse picks up speed, and there’s nothing left for James to do, except to fall on his knees and yell, before John goes completely out of hear shot, "You better come back, you shit!"

When exactly he started crying James doesn’t know, but there is no stopping it now; he weeps and weeps with his hands clutching to the dirt of the ground until all air escapes his lungs, until his vision becomes blurry with it and then some more, and he is left alone, wondering when exactly he’s going to wake up from this nightmare.

When the landscape around him starts spinning uncontrollably, at first, he doesn’t notice. No, he thinks it’s dizziness from the tears, that it’s the fatigue, the weariness of loosing John once again; hallucinations. But then the spiralling doesn’t stop, it only grows quicker, wilder, and fear digs itself into his bones. He falls again, like a corpse rotting deeper into the ground, he falls, and when he tries to scream, handfuls of dirt tumble inside his mouth and lodge themselves in his throat. He tastes nothing and feels no physical pain, but he suffocates, until all turns black, and he is gone.

 

_Two._

Darkness again.

James wakes up in a choked gasp and his forehead bumps hard against something. He groans in pain but there is no room for his hands to reach his head, and even after having blinked multiple times, he sees nothing. His heartbeat picks up its pace and he breathes harshly through his nose, closing his eyes shut when the whole situation proves itself to be right on the edge of too much.

What he knows is that he’s laying down in a small and dark, closed, space. Had he been buried alive? At first the silence around him presses heavily on his chest, only accentuating the fear, but then, where his eyes first failed him, his ears don’t. He picks up on the sound of voices, mumbled voices, coming from everywhere around him. He starts banging on the wood with his foot.

"Help! Help!" He yells, banging still, and when something moves, he truly believes his prayers have been answered.

He learns shortly that this is not the case. Yes, he is freed; the casket he found himself in falls and breaks, taking him down, face flat, rolling onto the ground with it, but it is not to a better place.

"Behold!" Someone all but yells, standing above him. "Behold the monster’s corse! He who hath finally been vanquished! Who hath raped thy wives, killed thy children!"

A roar of cheers erupts, and James moves his head to try and see what’s going on. There is a sword pointed at his face but he recognizes it quickly for what it is; an imitation, a thin piece of wood painted silver to create the illusion of a sword.

When he tries to move again, someone hits him in the arm.

"You’re supposed to play dead, you fucking idiot," they whisper harshly at him, and James’ mouth opens agape, only to fall shut again.

So, that is what it was. A play.

The crowd cheers again and the hero continues his speech. There are words about the war finally coming to an end, civilization winning the fight; something about the character’s wife waiting for him at some castle, with a mighty feast of victory, and James can do nothing but lay still. He almost loses it when they finally name him, _Mister Flint, the villain,_ and the people leap from their seats, throwing various items at his supposedly dead body, but thankfully it is over before he can do anything about it. The curtain falls.

He doesn’t bother asking anyone what is going on. He follows the signs until he finds a door with his name written upon it. He doesn’t know what any of it means; what happened with Silver, the spiralling into darkness, _this_ , but he is smart enough to recognize a pattern when he sees one. No one can help him here.

When he enters his dressing room, to his surprise, he doesn’t find it unoccupied. No, someone stands at his arrival, and James’ brain registers what it sees; the body, the lean shoulders, the blonde hair…

" _Thomas_ ," he exhales, and the joy ignites a fire in his lungs. He launches himself at the other man, grabbing him by the shoulders with all his might to kiss him breathless, and once their lips connect, he –

He is pushed back.

"What the hell do you think you’re doing?!" Thomas looks enraged. "First, you ruin the very last scene of my play, and then, you somehow believe _kissing_ me will make it all better?"

"What? But – " James is lost. "Thomas, it’s me."

"Yes, it’s you. An actor in my employ." Thomas sighs. "Although, perhaps not for long anymore."

James’ chest heaves with the effort of breathing. The realization dawns upon him that they are not together in this place, that Thomas obviously feels nothing of the romantic sort towards him, and that he most likely never will. His heart breaks a million times over.

"I see," James mutters, because it is all he can say without his whole body collapsing on itself. "I’m – I apologize."

"Good. You will do better tomorrow, yes?"

"Yes," James says with a nod, and Thomas mirrors it, before he grabs his coat from the dressing chair and moves to get out of the room.

"And Mister McGraw?" Thomas turns his head right as he gets under the doorframe. "Don’t you _ever_ do that again."

 

The play goes on for months, or years, for all James knows, and each day is more impossible to bear than the next. But it isn’t necessarily playing some villain six out of seven nights of the week that gets to him; it isn’t being hated and _boo_ ed at that has him passing out each night with a bottle of booze still in the grip of his hand. It’s Thomas. It’s always Thomas. His indifference and his cold-heartedness and the distance he insists on putting between the two of them. Even when they’d just met, in what seemed like only just a dream now, he hadn’t been like this. He’d been warm and inviting and good.

So James, for the first time ever since _whatever this was_ started, starts longing for the embrace of the darkness. He wants to be brought back to the dark and stay there. He’d never been stranger to unrequited love before, but to be forced to see _him_ every day, to have him so close and yet so completely out of reach?

It hurt more than anything ever could.

 

Time passes still, agonizingly slow, and the play comes to an end. There’s the last time James simulates losing a combat and the last time he pretends to be dead, pushed off a broken casket, and then, _finally_ , the last time the curtain falls to the stage. People of the crew are certainly happy, but James is happiest of all. He thinks he is freed and that the pain will subdue, like the sink hole-cover of his brain has been pulled and all the sadness can finally go down the drain.

"What’s next for you?" Billy asks him, although it is not the same Billy he’d once known. This one was far more pleasant. "Got any other gigs?"

James smiles, "Fuck, no."

He gets to his dressing room quickly enough, gets rid of his costume by dumping it in the garbage bin, puts the rest of his things in order. He steals the candlesticks, puts on his coat, and grabs his cigarettes from the bottom left drawer, before he shuts the lights, and walks to the backdoor entrance, which he knows will get him into the alleyway, where he will be able to smoke in peace, like he’s done every night since he got here.

What he doesn’t expect, however, is to find Thomas there, waiting for him. As if this isn’t a completely different universe and they’re about to drive home together.

Thomas accepts the cigarette he hands him.

"I loved you once," James tells him after a while of silence, for lack of having anything else to say. What did he even have to lose at this point, anyhow? "You loved me back."

Thomas chuckles, and James’ heart warms until it near explodes. 

"You are aware that makes absolutely no sense?"

"I know."

Silence falls heavily upon them. There is so much more James wants to say but he can’t bring himself to. This thing between them now, it is so frail, so fragile, that he fears saying anything more would shatter it to pieces.

"But maybe I could believe it, if I chose to," Thomas breaks the quiet with, and James’ half-burnt cigarette falls to the ground from the sheer shock of the revelation. "That in another life, maybe, we…"

Thomas doesn’t finish with words, but the look he sends James then is so filled with meaning that there is no doubt what the rest of that sentence was to be. A flicker of hope in James’ heartache lights a fire all the way up to his pupils, and he stares into Thomas’ own eyes, stares and stares until the other man opens his mouth to take a breath and it becomes clear they are both done for. James brings his hand up to caress Thomas’ cheek, and Thomas’ eyelids fall shut, before their bodies gravitate towards one another, and they finally kiss.

The touch of Thomas’ lips, his tongue sweeping across his teeth to make way, the feel of his hands grabbing his waist; it makes all of James’ previous pains worth it. All of it. It makes him feel alive again, makes him forget the darkness.

But just as he pulls away to stare into those beautiful eyes again, he feels it happening. The distress must have been clear in his own gaze, because Thomas instantly grabs his head with both hands, exclaims, "James? James, what’s wrong?", but James can’t explain it; he just stares into the void, at the brick walls that are spinning faster and faster all around them, stares at Thomas’ face that is slowly fading away, loosing all detail, and he shouts, he yells, "Please! No! No, not this time!", and he screams –

And he falls.

_Three._

The tide gently washes him onto the shore. Once he regains consciousness, he coughs and coughs and throws up the entire contents of his stomach onto the wet sand, which consists mostly of salt water, and then something acidic, that burns all the way up his throat. He cries afterward, whimpers and sobs like an infant, which is perhaps pathetic, yes, but he’s at a loss of what else to do with himself.

He doesn’t know for how long he lays there. Hours, days, weeks – it’s not like the passing of time matters in this place. He stares at the bright blue sky and it stays blue; the sun never sets; the clouds don’t move; the moon doesn’t rise. It’s a beautiful day that never ends and James starts to feel sick with it. _I’m in Hell_ , he thinks. A realization that hits hard in the hollow of his chest. _And I wish I could die._

He gets up, eventually, slowly, with a great deal of difficulty. His brain is still fuzzy with memories of Thomas and it drains him of his energy completely; like a never-ending pit in his guts, a constant reminder that this pain isn’t meant to be temporary. Grains of sand have lodged themselves uncomfortably in between his toes and the heat makes him sweat through his clothes but he walks, parallel to the waterline, his poor attempt at following at least some sort of guidance.

He stops paying attention to his surroundings for a while, only walking and walking and walking, until, out of the corner of his eye, he catches movement near the treeline. That gives him pause.

"Who’s there?" He yells. His stomach grumbles.

The only answer he gets is the wind blowing through some leaves, and maybe it was only ever that, the wind, but James decides to investigate (maybe it was Silver again, maybe it was Thomas).  

The dirt and the roots are unkind to his bare feet but still he walks through it all, following a path that’s been made with footsteps crushing the leaves before him. And so, he wasn’t wrong; someone _had_ been there.

"Hello?" He tries again. "Hello?!"

James gives them time to manifest but absolutely nothing happens. He sighs and scratches the short hair atop his head before continuing on his way, each step heavier than the one that came before. He is weary with fatigue; the heat deep inside the woods is somehow worse to handle than the striking sun on the beach, because even though there is shade, the humidity unnaturally clings to his skin like he has never experienced before.

He comes upon an area mostly surrounded by bushes, the trees dispersed around and about, and after that a clearing. Green hills that look like camel bumps and a great, big mountain far in the distance, rising far above the clouds.

James is parched, and his spirit is first crushed by the realization that there is no source of water visible to his eye. But that’s when he sees it. A silhouette, standing not far on top of one of the hills.

"You!" He yells as he starts running. He makes it halfway to the top before the exhaustion forces him to start climbing on all fours. At this moment, he knows nothing but _breathe, breathe, don’t forget to breathe_.

He falls on his back before he can make it to the top. He tries to yell for the other person to come down, to help him, but his chest heaves with every breath he takes, and his mouth has never felt this dry. Worse of all, there’s still the damned blue sky above him, _mocking_ him.

He passes out.

 

"James?"

He wakes up to a familiar voice saying his name. For a pitiful second, he thinks he’s somewhere far, far different.

"James, wake up."

When he opens his eyes, there is a silhouette blocking out the sunlight, a hand extended for him to grab, and it’s then that he realizes it is no silhouette at all.

"Miranda?"

She smiles, angelic, beautiful as she helps him up, keeping his hand held tight in hers so they can walk together up the hill. She’s strong, stronger than what he remembered. James is confused but he dares not say a word.

Miranda doesn’t seem to mind the silence. Once they get to the top, facing the mighty mountain with a full view, she carefully sits herself down onto the grass, and even as James does the same, she remains speechless.

"Is… Is it really you?" He asks.

"Yes," the answer is immediate. "And no. In the same way you’re you but aren’t."

James’ eyelids fall shut.

"It’s true you were always one step ahead of me, when it comes to philosophy."

"This isn’t philosophy, James. It’s…"

"Hell?"

Finally, she turns her head to look at him. Locks of her hair fall atop her breasts, the robe tied around her waist loosening slightly with the movement, and the sight reminds him of days he wishes not to.

"So you _do_ know." She smiles again.

"It became fairly obvious. I just don't understand how you would be here with me." 

Her smile widens some before it disappears completely, fading off her face until she looks nothing but old and weary. There’s also a sadness in her gaze that won’t leave, and he remembers it from days past, _there is no life here, no joy here, no love here_ , thinking himself dumb to never have noticed it before. So incredibly stupid. He should have listened.

But the landscape before him offers little distraction to his desolate thoughts. All looks real enough but everything holds so still, as if frozen in time or like an oil painting. Nothing moves, not even a singular leaf in the wind, and it is so utterly boring, so –

A deep rumble shakes him up. Seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere around him at the same time, the guttural sound doesn’t stop, only aggravating in volume and intensity by the second.

"What’s happening?" James yells over the noise, his confusion only growing bigger when he notices the trees on the mountain have started to move, _all at once_. "Earthquake?!"

He jumps on his feet and frantically looks around, but nothing else is moving. The ground underneath his feet is barely shaking. Miranda isn’t doing anything.

"Miranda?!"

She says nothing and rests her body on the grass, eyes sewn shut, in such a calm state of being that James feels even worse for it.  

"Do you know why you are here?!" She screams.

And James doesn’t know what to answer, he doesn’t know what to say, until finally he sees. He sees the mountain and the trees and sees that they’re falling, all falling down the mountain side towards him at an alarmingly fast speed, and he sees that they _aren’t_ trees, and that the mountain is dramatically losing in height, gaining in width. And what in the distance looked like trees are now all piling up on top of each other in their fall, like a great, big avalanche of – of –

"Because of them!"

Bodies. Thousands and thousands and thousands of bodies all rushing down towards him. James sees with more details now, not the faces but blurs of limbs and clothing, much of it coated in red – in blood. And it takes him a second, but finally he gets it. That these are not _just_ bodies. He knows that if he were to look closely at them he would see familiar faces; men, women, former friends, pirates, crewmates, merchants, soldiers…

They are all the people he’s killed. All the people he _got_ killed.

His heart clenches on itself and he instantly falls on his knees.

"Miranda?" He grabs her hand, desperate, but she doesn’t budge. "Miranda, I’m not a monster. Please. I never meant for…"

He sobs, biting down on her hand that he’s brought to his lips in despair, a cry torn out of his throat, but even his own ears don’t hear it. The rumble from the bodies has grown deafening.

They’re close.

"I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry." He falls completely beside her, all of his limbs numb from the fear. " _Please_."

But God doesn’t answer.

And God doesn’t forgive.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I love James Flint to death.  
> Also me: I will make him dead and his afterlife will consist of him living all different kinds of personal Hell. Over and over and over again.
> 
> In all honesty though, this was almost painful to write.  
> Comments are super fucking appreciated, if you can spare the time and kindness to leave any!  
> Thanks a lot for reading <3


End file.
